The Costs of Industrial Food & The Benefits of Local Food

I’ve started reading “Slow Food Nation: Why Our Food Should be Good, Clean, and Fair” by Carlo Pertrini. In the Forward by Alice Waters, she writes, “We soon discovered that the best-tasting food came from local farmers, ranchers, and foragers, and fisherman who were committed to should in sustainable practices.”

More most be done to promote a local organic food system. I am working on an article now discussing how law both impedes and can help facilitate such a market. Not only does local chem-free food taste better, but it limits the environmental costs of food consumption.

Food choices can contribute to the climate crisis, cause species loss, impair water and air quality, and accelerate land use degradation. For example, an estimated 25 percent of the emissions produced by people in industrialized nations can be traced to the food they eat. The causes of these environmental costs are many—the livestock industry, a processed and meat-heavy diet, agricultural practices like pesticides and fertilization, and fossil-fuel intensive food transportation, factory processing, packaging and large-scale distribution systems. These are traits of the dominant industrial food model.